Apple TV movies on 2025 ipad mini darker than on 2015 iPad mini

I gave my stepdad a brand new iPad and it's much worse for his movies than his old iPad.

The top model in the photo below

is an iPad mini 4 from 2015 running iPadOS 15.8.4. The bottom model is a brand new 2025 iPad mini A17 Pro running iPadOS 18.5.

Both are showing the same shot of the same movie on Apple TV. Both iPads have the brightness slider in Display & Brightness turned all the way up. It may not have been the best choice of movie still since it is mostly light (the human image shows the difference). Most shots in the movie are much darker, and thus the difference makes the movie almost unwatchable.

When the new iPad screen showed the movie as darker, I turned Auto-Brightness off both in Display & Brightness and in Accessibility > Display & Test Size for that new iPad. No luck. Then I turned Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce White Point on and adjusted the slider. No difference. (The screenshot shows the new iPad with all these changes applied.) I also tried adjusting the Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters l. Nothing.

Help! There has to be something that will render Apple TV movies on this brand new iPad viewable.

[Edited by Moderator]